[Mailman-Users] Questions on 'List Renaming' & Misc.

[Mark Sapiro]

Joe Espinoza wrote:

>Regarding an earlier question on changing the headers;
>
>I guess something similar can be achieved by;
>
>- Changing the name of the list, to something less obvious
>
>- Enabling the 'Moderated' option for all users by default, so that
>way anyone that attempts to post to the list...will not be able to. It
>will sit in queue instead and wait for me to release it
>
>Does this sound ok? Is there a better way to achieve something like
>this? What are your thoughts?


It seems you want an "announcement" list. In that case, moderating
everyone is the way to go. See
http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py?req=show&file=faq03.011.htp
for more info.


>Also, can I easily "change the name of the list" from the Mailman UI
>or do I have to
>create a new one?


No. You can't change the name of a list from the Mailman web UI. If you
have sufficient access to the Mailman installation, you can change the
name of a list as follows. Note that I've never actually done this, so
there may be gotchas somewhere that I haven't thought of.

Change the name of the lists/listname directory.
Change the real_name attribute on the list's General options page to
match the new neme except perhaps for case.
Change the name of the archives/private/listname directory.
Change the name of the archives/private/listname.mbox directory.
Change the name of the archives/private/listname.mbox/listname.mbox
file.
If there are public archives change the name and target of the
archives/public/listname symlink.
Rebuild the archives with bin/arch.

It might be easer to create a new list.


>One more thing, since I'm still a big n00be on email related stuff;
>
>What are the advantages of setting up a mailing list such as this,
>instead of copying and pasting tons of email addresses in the 'bcc'
>field?
>
>I've noticed that when I have done the 'copy & paste' method, I get
>delivery failures/bounce messages, because I'm sending to way too many
>recipients. Is this one way how a mailing list provides a greater
>advantage? Just sending to one email address instead of many?

Again, it seems you're thinking of an "announcement" list since a Bcc
list doesn't work for a discussion list and a Cc list has privacy
concerns.

A big advantage of a mail list manager vs. a Bcc list is the one you
note. A properly installed and configured mail list manager interacts
with its MTA in a way that insures that the mail will be sent to all
list members even if this is thousands or tens of thousands of
recipients. A Bcc list is subject to whatever limitation you might
encounter in the number of recipients that can be specified for a
single SMTP transaction. The Bcc is also cumbersome to manage and
error prone.

Also, the mail list manager can provide other services such as
subscription management, automated bounce processing, etc.

--
Mark Sapiro <msapiro at value.net>       The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan